She Loved Me

she knew i was weird
but she told everyone else
it was just because i was so smart

i think i believed it more
than they did

i think she believed it more
than me

i was 11
or 12
when i wrote my first poem

i showed it to her first
because i knew it would garner
her automatic praise

but i never expected the acclaim
that i received

she paid to have it printed
in the local paper

you'd have thought
i was Robert fucking Frost
or some shit

i don't remember why i wrote it
if it was some underlying need
to create
or if i just thought it would be a good way
to make myself stand out
and seem more interesting
to cute girls

i probably just saw some character
in a movie do it

either way
after gramma had it printed
in the paper
i knew i had to keep it up
even if just to make her proud

which it usually did

but she didn't understand
when i started writing free verse

"why doesn't it rhyme?"
she'd ask

and she wasn't thrilled when i would swear
in poems

"you don't need that language,"
she'd say

but she would always listen
to every
single
poem
i
ever
wrote

every
single
line

and even if she thought it should rhyme
and that it would be better without
the cussing
she would still convince me
that i was some kind of genius

sometimes
i still believe i am

sometimes
i think it was just because
she loved me

but that alone is enough reason
for me not to quit